


a funeral for the former me (a four night procession)

by deplore



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Akashi falls asleep, another Akashi wakes up. Mayuzumi, as per usual, is stuck in the middle.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Just after 2:30AM or so, he stirs at the sound of something in the study, glancing blearily at the clock that sits on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Akashi's still asleep like the dead – without thinking too hard on things, like if maybe their apartment is being broken into or something distressing, Mayuzumi blearily gets up and walks to the study.</p>
  <p>There, sitting at Akashi's desk is, well – <i>Akashi</i>. He sits with his ankles crossed and eyes closed. The moonlight through the window hits his face in a way that's almost eerie.</p>
  <p>Mayuzumi stares. “Weren't you asleep?” he asks.</p>
  <p>Akashi opens his eyes, and the first thing that Mayuzumi notices is that the light glances off of his left eye differently from his right. Other than that, though, everything about the way he looks indicates that this is the same Akashi that Mayuzumi knows he just left asleep in the bedroom – yet Mayuzumi gets the distinct sense that they're different, somehow. “I've been asleep for a long time,” Akashi concedes. “Won't you accompany me for a bit, now that I'm awake?”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	a funeral for the former me (a four night procession)

It begins like this: in the middle of Golden Week, Akashi suddenly stands up in the middle of dinner. “I'm tired,” he says, staring vaguely over Mayuzumi's head. “I think I'll go to sleep soon.”

Mayuzumi puts his bowl down and glances at Akashi. “It's your turn to do the dishes,” he replies.

“Just leave them in the sink, I'll do them in the morning,” Akashi says. “I might not get up for a while. Good night.”

And with that, Akashi drifts down the hallway, almost as if in a trance, tucks himself into bed, and falls into a long, deep sleep.

  
  


**THE FIRST NIGHT.**

  
  


Mayuzumi spends the rest of the evening with a book and his headphones on. When he gets tired, he brushes his teeth, changes into his sleeping clothes, and claims his spot on the left side of the bed. On the right half, Akashi sleeps so deeply that Mayuzumi is almost tempted to check him for a pulse: his breathing is shallow and his face seems pale somehow. He tries instead to just not think about it too hard as he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep himself.

Just after 2:30AM or so, he stirs at the sound of something in the study, glancing blearily at the clock that sits on the nightstand on his side of the bed. Akashi's still asleep like the dead – without thinking too hard on things, like if maybe their apartment is being broken into or something distressing, Mayuzumi blearily gets up and walks to the study.

There, sitting at Akashi's desk is, well – _Akashi_. He sits with his ankles crossed and eyes closed. The moonlight through the window hits his face in a way that's almost eerie.

Mayuzumi stares. “Weren't you asleep?” he asks.

Akashi opens his eyes, and the first thing that Mayuzumi notices is that the light glances off of his left eye differently from his right. Other than that, though, everything about the way he looks indicates that this is the same Akashi that Mayuzumi knows he just left asleep in the bedroom – yet Mayuzumi gets the distinct sense that they're different, somehow. “I've been asleep for a long time,” Akashi concedes. “Won't you accompany me for a bit, now that I'm awake?”

“Are you really Akashi Seijuurou?” Mayuzumi asks slowly.

Akashi laughs and doesn't answer.

  
  
  


**THE SECOND DAY**

  
  
  


Mayuzumi doesn't remember how he made it back to the bedroom, or if it was all just a strange dream, but when he wakes up, he finds himself on the left side of the bed. He wipes the sleep out of his eyes and then glances to where Akashi's asleep – and he _is_ still asleep. Mayuzumi frowns and reaches out to put his hand on Akashi's shoulder, shaking him gently.

Normally, Akashi falls asleep easily but also wakes up easily too. This morning, though, Akashi doesn't even stir in the slightest.

“Weird,” Mayuzumi says. He walks to the kitchenette and stares at the sink, which still has last night's dishes in it. He sighs, starts the tap water running to clean them, and decides to try and go about his day as usual.

  
  
  


**THE SECOND NIGHT**

  
  
  


Mayuzumi doesn't mind having the day to himself; some days it's nice to have solitude when he's so used to cohabitation. But the uneasiness that he feels from the fact that Akashi's been asleep for over twenty-four hours makes him sleep fitfully, too, and he ends up getting up in the middle of the night to walk around to try and fatigue himself.

He walks down the hallway slow and steady, pretending like he has weights strapped onto his ankles. He passes by the bathroom – the spare bedroom – but then he pauses before he walks past the study, opening the door and peeking in.

Akashi is sitting there again. He glances up at the sound of the door opening. “It's you,” he says. “Care to join me?”

“Not really,” Mayuzumi replies indifferently. “But I'm not tired, so I guess I may as well have company.”

“Come in, then,” Akashi says.

  
  
  


For a while, they just sit in silence. Mayuzumi can tell without being told that this Akashi isn't quite the Akashi he's come to know, but he thinks it _is_ the Akashi he once knew. He gives off the same aura as the person that once greeted Mayuzumi on Rakuzan's rooftop, at least, because he remembers that meeting in a way that's intimate and visceral, and he'd been won over by the sheer atmosphere that Akashi commanded around him. The air of somebody who knows what he wants and is willing to do anything he needs to get it – dangerous and dangerously fragile, interesting and paradoxical enough that Mayuzumi had let himself get caught in Akashi's pace.

Finally, Akashi leans forward. “Tell me how you're doing,” he says.

“Well,” Mayuzumi replies, and then falls short for a moment. “I'm alright. Pretty content, all things considered. I like my life, which is a strange thought, because I always figured I'd settle for a just decent life.”

Akashi smiles. “Good to hear,” he says. “And tell me about how we're doing?”

“Strange, but that was a given,” Mayuzumi answers, without hesitating. “I don't know what we are. We just – are.”

“Mm. And that's all you have to say about that?” Akashi asks.

It's strange, Mayuzumi thinks, but the Akashi he lives with – he's good at lying by omission to that Akashi. He knows Akashi knows there's always things he leaves unsaid, but it's a sort of equilibrium in their relationship. Neither them will ask so the other doesn't have to tell, it lets them pretend like there's nothing there at all to begin with. No history, no context, nothing that indicates that they were ever anything but each others' lovers, that they had ever met when they were teenagers in high school.

But now, he feels compelled to speak, like the Akashi before him is taunting him with his gaze, with a veneer of superiority in his tone. “I don't know what else to say, ” Mayuzumi says dully. “Although, to be honest, I sometimes think that all of this would be easier if you had been born a girl.”

Akashi tilts his head. “Why is that?” he asks, getting up off of his chair and walking over to Mayuzumi.

“We're living together, we're sleeping in the same bed. We're fucking on a regular basis. If you were a woman, it'd be downright scandalous, considering you're a proper young master and all. We'd probably have to get married. It's just easier, more – conventional, like there would be _something_ normal about all of this,” Mayuzumi answers slowly, contemplatively.

Akashi laughs, bending over as he slides the palms of his hands against either side of Mayuzumi's face. “You make it sound almost cruel,” he croons, brushing his lips against Mayuzumi's neck. “To be stuck with me in such a permanent way. How vindictive...” He nips at the delicate skin there, enough to send a tiny jolt of pain. “I feel so loved.”

_That's not what I meant_ , Mayuzumi doesn't say. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans back in his seat. It feels an awful lot like falling.

  
  
  


**THE THIRD DAY**

  
  


Mayuzumi wakes up in the bed again. Akashi, unsurprisingly at this point, is still asleep. When he looks in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, he notices a mark on his neck, not unlike the marks that Akashi occasionally leaves when they have sex. He frowns as he inspects it, and then decides to ignore it.

He spends the day trying to read, and ends up pondering a strange fact about himself: in his college days, he often slept with attractive women. Not so much conventionally beautiful women, exactly, but women with an aura that tends to catch people – somebody people feel compelled to turn around to give a second glance at. He rarely slept with the same of such woman more than once, and he has an inkling they never really remembered him, or saw him properly to begin with. That they probably had sex with him because he was transient to them, that they thought of him more as a passing vision rather than the classmate who sits near the back of the classroom.

Mayuzumi didn't mind that. They were just as temporal to him as he was to them, and he never bragged about it – never saw any reason _to_ brag about it. The trend had continued into his first few years of work as a rookie editor in a mid-sized publishing company, but then he'd happened to meet Akashi at a launch party and even though they hadn't done anything but acknowledge each others' mutual existences for the first time since he'd graduated Rakuzan, he stopped sleeping with attractive, transient women, turning down a few direct solicitations. It had ceased to have any meaning to him – more than that, it had started feeling desperate.

Sides to him that he's never talked to Akashi about. Sides to him that he's never wanted Akashi to know.

He gets through half a chapter in the entire day, but not a single word of it actually enters his brain.

  
  
  


**THE THIRD NIGHT**

  
  


This time, instead of waiting to wake up, Mayuzumi just stays up as long as he can, sitting in the study. He's read too many stories, though, to think that it'll actually work and he'll see some apparition of Akashi form in front of his very eyes – so he's not even surprised when he walks to the kitchenette to get a glass of water to find Akashi sitting there, inspecting his reflection in one of the glass-lined cabinets.

“My hair's gotten long in the front,” Akashi says, reaching up to pick up a stray strand of hair, holding it away from his face. “I think I want to trim it. Won't you help me?”

It's funny how Akashi sometimes doesn't seem to know how to make a proper request, Mayuzumi thinks. He has to wonder how much of it is intentional and how much of it is just naturally manipulative. “ _Will you help me?”_ versus “ _Won't you help me?”_ It preys upon the disinclination of most people to have to have to actively, verbally deny others. Mayuzumi recalls reading this in a book on how to to read social cues. It was one of the books Akashi had told him to read, when he was perfecting his misdirection.

“Alright,” Mayuzumi replies. The glass of water he'd wanted has been forgotten. “I'll get the cutting shears.”

So a few minutes later, Akashi perches himself on one of the high stools at their kitchenette island, the lights on low and dim as Mayuzumi brushes his fingers through the tips of Akashi's bangs, holding the shears in his dominant hand loosely. Abruptly, he remembers something Akashi once said – a promise to offer his own eyes if they ever lost – and for a moment, he's possessed with a desire to grip the scissors in his palm hard and stab and

_stab and stab  
_ _and stab and sta_ _**b and stAB AND ST A B –** _

until there's nothing but gore left in the space where Akashi's left eye is, blood and vitreous fluid and tears. But it wouldn't bring him any happiness, he knows, all it would be is a childish act of disproportionate retribution. A baseless, inhumane pseudo-punishment over something as trivial as a high school sports game.

He swallows hard, fingertips sliding against the curve of Akashi's eyelid. “How do you want it?” he asks.

“Hmm,” Akashi hums. “I want you to do me however you like me.”

Mayuzumi swallows, throat going dry as the sarcastic reply he wants to give ( _well if you're going to talk like that, then you'd better start taking your clothes off_ ) dies in his throat. “Yeah, okay,” he says, before he starts snipping. Without particularly thinking about it, he ends up giving Akashi a haircut like the one Akashi gave himself before the Winter Cup all those years ago.

“How does it look?” Akashi asks when it's done. His eyes are still closed, and the twisted desire to hurt him hasn't quite died down in Mayuzumi's stomach.

“You look like you,” Mayuzumi replies, cutting off any response Akashi might give by putting his hands on either side of Akashi, bracing himself against the counter as he presses a kiss to Akashi's lips.

Akashi hums into the kiss, bringing his hands up to cup either side of Mayuzumi's face. When they part, he finally opens his eyes and smiles, sly and taunting. “Now what's gotten into you?” he asks.

“What game are you playing with me this time?” Mayuzumi replies.

Akashi hooks his legs around Mayuzumi's hips, drawing him in closer. “I'm not playing around right now,” he says softly, so quietly that Mayuzumi has to strain himself to hear the words properly. “No, I'm quite serious with you.”

“Sure you are,” Mayuzumi murmurs. Akashi smiles and kisses him.

  
  
  


**THE FOURTH DAY**

  
  
  


He wakes up in bed again. Akashi slumbers on. Mayuzumi tries to not look at him as he changes clothes.

After eating breakfast, Mayuzumi walks to the nearest pharmacy and buys an over-the-counter sleeping aid. He takes it after lunch, lies down on the couch in the living room, and sleeps clear through the rest of the day.

  
  
  


**(A VERY SHORT HISTORY LESSON)**

  
  


Mayuzumi's life can be divided into roughly four main periods: before Akashi, during Akashi, the interlude, and Akashi's reemergence. By and far the most confusing of these periods, in his opinion, is that arising from Akashi's reemergence. It had been about four months after their unexpected reunion that they started a relationship – or really, to him, it feels more like they fell into it.

They went out on a few dates that they didn't call _dates_ (to museums and to movies, walking through parks together, shopping trips, outings that ended with kisses) and found that they get along well. Then they were visiting each others' houses and having sex every now and again, and sometimes Akashi would cook breakfast in the morning. Mayuzumi starts calling Akashi by his first name; Akashi dances around various levels of formality until he settles on “Chihiro-san” and refuses to move away from it. They'd complain about their jobs to each other. Mayuzumi would ask Akashi to read over sections of editorial work he was having a hard time parsing. Akashi gave Mayuzumi a key to his apartment, and then they moved in with each other. All normal steps in a normal relationship, except Mayuzumi's never called Akashi his boyfriend or significant over – in his head, they just have a nebulously undefined _thing_ with each other.

It's not a bad thing, he thinks. On the whole, it's a good thing, except that their entire relationship is more like a menage a trois: Akashi, Mayuzumi, and their unspoken history – or perhaps, Akashi, Mayuzumi, and that other Akashi. Mayuzumi decides to just live with that, and chooses to let Akashi do with that what he will without prying.

  
  


**THE FOURTH NIGHT**

  
  


Mayuzumi stirs in the early night to find his head in Akashi's lap. Akashi smiles down at him, smoothing his hand through Mayuzumi's hair. “Did you sleep well?” he asks.

“Not really,” Mayuzumi admits.

“Even though you used a sleeping aid? A pity,” Akashi replies. “You must have something truly pressing on your mind.”

“I have to ask you again,” Mayuzumi says. “Are you really Akashi Seijuurou?”

Akashi stares down at him. “You know the answer to that already,” he answers. “I am, but I'm not. I was, but I don't think I will be for much longer.”

“As I thought. So you _are_ different from each other,” Mayuzumi murmurs, closing his eyes. It's something he's always suspected a little, ever since _that game_. It's something he's never chosen to ask about, until now.

“Not as different as you probably want us to be,” Akashi replies. “But different enough, yes.”

For a while, the two of them are silent. Then Mayuzumi sighs sharply. “You know, I've been thinking. _You've_ never called me by name before,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Akashi replies, tone perfectly polite – not confused – Mayuzumi is inclined to think he's playing dumb.

“The only times I ever heard you say my name, it was my full name... when you'd read off of the team roster.” There's a pause. “That, and the first time we met.”

“Mm. Is that so,” Akashi replies. “Why bring it up now, though?”

Mayuzumi smiles wanly, and relishes in being the one who gets to be mysteriously silent for once. Instead, he says, “You know, the last three nights, I haven't been able to remember how things ended. They end suddenly, and I wake up in bed in the morning. Like all of this is just a dream.”

Akashi tilts his head. “Maybe it's best to think of this as a dream, and of me as a passing vision,” he replies. Akashi's words remind Mayuzumi of his college days, the transient attractive women he slept with, the way that he had eventually thought of it as an act of desperation. His stomach turns.

“You've never been a passing anything to anybody you've met, I'd bet good money on that,” Mayuzumi says dryly.

“Do I come in like a storm?” Akashi smiles, but his words are sharp and pointed at himself. He reaches down to cup Mayuzumi's face. “And leave ruin in my wake? Well, I suppose you can only speak for yourself, but – yours is the only opinion I'm interested in right now, anyway.”

A philosopher once said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Mayuzumi remembers the past pretty well, but he's not sure exactly what he's supposed to have _learned_ from it. If the lesson is “don't trust Akashi Seijuurou, he will probably ruin you,” then he has failed pretty drastically – but he also hasn't been ruined (again), for whatever that's worth. If the lesson is “give second chances to things you've given upon on”, then he supposes overall, giving both basketball and Akashi another shot have turned out to be both a blessing and a curse. Mayuzumi scoffs. “Please, don't flatter yourself too much. You didn't _ruin me_. Pissed me off, sure, but you know me. I like myself too much to let you hurt me too badly.”

It takes Akashi a while to reply. Mayuzumi glances up at Akashi's face, and notices there's a glossy sheen in his eyes. “Glad to hear it,” Akashi finally says, voice tight and strained.

Mayuzumi reaches up to cup Akashi's cheeks in turn, holding either side of his face in his palms gently. “All you had to do is ask, it's not like I pull my punches,” he replies. It figures, Mayuzumi thinks, that Akashi would take such a convoluted way of finally breaking their self-imposed silence on talking about the past.

“There's a part of me that wanted to know and a part of me that never wanted to think about it, I think,” Akashi says.

“One who chose to fall asleep, and another who wanted to stay awake?” Mayuzumi suggests wryly.

Akashi gives a short laugh at that. “Perhaps,” he says amenably, offering the briefest of smiles before his expression changes to something harder, something more distant. He sighs, and brushes his thumb against Mayuzumi's cheekbone. “Actually, I'm tired. I haven't been awake like this in a long time... so I think I might go to sleep soon, and I might not get up for a while.”

“Yeah?” Mayuzumi asks. “Let me guess. You don't want me to wake you?”

“No, I'll get up when I need to,” Akashi replies, closing his eyes. “Although maybe a time like that won't ever come again. Who knows?”

“I thought you could see the future,” Mayuzumi says.

Akashi smiles. He looks at peace, Mayuzumi notes, an expression that he never saw on Akashi when they'd played on the same team together all those years ago. “I find that you're very hard to predict,” he murmurs.

“Do me one favor before you go to sleep, then,” Mayuzumi says. “Call me by my name.”

Akashi opens his eyes. He bends over, bringing his face close to Mayuzumi's, until Mayuzumi can feel Akashi's breath on his skin and count his individual eyelashes. Akashi opens his mouth and inhales and begins to form a word –

  
  
  


**THE FIRST DAY**

  
  


Mayuzumi wakes up on the left side of the bed, as usual. He glances over to his right – Akashi is still asleep. “Hey, wake up,” he says, reaching over to shake Akashi awake.

The moment his hand touches Akashi's shoulder, Akashi stirs, mumbling something incoherent as he reaches to grab Mayuzumi's wrist. After a few moments, he yawns and rubs at his eyes, blinking a few times before opening them properly. “Good morning,” he says. His voice is thick with disuse, and Akashi seems surprised to hear himself. He clears his throat and then lets go of Mayuzumi as he pulls himself into a sitting position, stretching his arms out.

“Still sleepy?” Mayuzumi asks.

“No,” Akashi answers. “I feel like I slept like the dead, I don't remember the last time I felt so refreshed when waking up.”

Mayuzumi nudges Akashi with his elbow. “I cleaned the dishes you left in the sink, so next time it's your turn,” he says. “I'll make breakfast.”

“Mmhm,” Akashi hums, getting up and walking to their dresser to get a change of clothes. He pauses as he catches his reflection in their bedroom mirror – stops and reaches up to brush his hand through his hair. “Did something happen to my hair?” he asks, confused. “It looks shorter than it did before.”

Mayuzumi looks up. His gaze meets Akashi's in the reflection of the mirror, and he notes that the light shines off both of Akashi's eyes in the same way. “You're just imagining things,” Mayuzumi says.

Akashi frowns and stares at the mirror a little longer before sighing and moving on. “If you say so. I'll take your word for it, Chihiro,” he replies.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a spiritual successor to [We Are Alight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1107486), though I have not yet given up on writing a direct sequel to it. Someday!
> 
> Thanks to [Tor](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tormalyne/pseuds/tormalyne) for checking this to make sure I didn't victimize spelling and grammar, as I am often wont to do.
> 
> I'm trying to get back into the swing of fic writing! While I don't feel this is my strongest writing, it's something, and that's better than nothing. I hope you enjoyed reading this nonetheless :>


End file.
